Fifteen Years After the Great Liberation
The obsidian spires of New Avalon stretched toward twin crimson suns, their surfaces etched with golden veins that pulsed with the life-force of a thousand liberated worlds. From the highest tower of the Sovereign Confluence, Lyralei Morgenstern—no longer the broken weapon of Void Warden nightmares, but the Iron Mother of the free multiverse—watched as delegates from forty-seven dimensional clusters gathered in the Grand Assembly below.
Her reflection in the crystalline window showed silver threading through midnight hair, lines of wisdom carved by years of impossible choices. At fifty-three, she carried herself with the lethal grace of someone who had stared into the abyss of tyranny and chosen to become its executioner rather than its victim.
